Rev’d Mark B. Stirdivant, Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yucaipa, California
✝ sdg ✝
Moonset
How do you build a kingdom? In this world, kingdoms are built by power. Kingdoms in this world are built by coercion, force, and leverage; by strength, battle and bloodshed. Exploit weaknesses as you climb to the top of the heap. You will often have to tear down one kingdom to make room for another. If people don’t agree and don’t want to do things your way, crush them. This is how you build a kingdom: By power, force, assertion, by an act of will. Look at the Roman Empire that was in control at the time of Jesus: It wasn’t built by kindness, moderation, and sensitivity. It was built by violence, control, and this was their message of cooperation: “Do things our way or be destroyed.”
Every time this year, we remember that we saw an evil sort of worldly kingdom-building on September 11 of 2001. A group of men examined American society and found that it did not agree with their ideals for a religious kingdom. To further their version of a kingdom, they worked to destroy the one they hated. They divided into teams, exploited our nation’s freedoms, hijacked four airplanes, and murdered thousands of civilians-invoking the name of their god in the process. While these attacks could not destroy so great a nation, they were meant as a warning, a strategy to silence and shame…and open the door for more.
It is simply a law of this world. Even defense against threatening evil requires power and force. Our rulers-our elected officials- had the solemn duty to investigate the attacks and identify the guilty for punishment and to defend ourselves from here on out. Throughout the centuries, some have proposed that Christians have no part in such a kingdom where power and violence are necessary to keep the people secure. However, our epistle for this day (Romans 13:1-10) makes clear that using earthly power is necessary while we are still in this world. It is God who appoints rulers, and He gives them the responsibility to bear the sword in defense of what is good. A ruler is “God’s minister, an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil” (Rom. 13:4). Rulers of all kinds are obligated by the Lord to rule justly, to punish the evildoer, and to wage war to protect their citizens from unjust attack.
Christians must support their rulers, provided their rulers are using their power righteously. It is among the duties of the Christian as a citizen to pray for his leaders and nation, pray for the enemy as well, serve his neighbor, and even lay down his life in service to his country. You are a citizen of a nation which relies on power to endure. This is not a bad thing: As long as there is evil in the world, evil must be curbed by law and force. This is how the Lord has established things to be.
Yet for you, as a Christian, this is only half of the story. You are also a citizen of another kingdom, because the Lord Jesus Christ has brought you into His kingdom, made you His citizen. You are part of His kingdom, but it is built on a different foundation. It is not built upon money or power. In fact, when Jesus first sends out His disciples to proclaim the kingdom, He does not instruct them to amass a war chest and armory first; instead, He instructs them to take no money, no extra supplies, not even a staff.
It’s a kingdom of grace. In other words, Jesus does not add you to His kingdom by saying, “As long as you prove your worth and your loyalty by your efforts, I will make you Mine.” He does not declare, “When you stop aiding and abetting the enemy by your sinning, then you are worthy to be My citizen.” And He most certainly does not say, “As soon as you go out and kill My enemies with the sword, then you belong in My paradise.” The god that says these things is a false god. Instead, your Lord Jesus, the true God, says things like, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made in perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).
The Lord makes you His by taking away your sins. He declares forgiveness because of what He has done; and rather than a show of strength, He calls upon you humbly to confess your sins. He gathers a kingdom made up of the weak, the humble, the lowly, the penitent. These are not usually the qualities that one desires in the citizens of a nation. And this is how His citizens are to act:
If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault between you and him alone. If he hears you, you have gained your brother. But if he will not hear, take with you one or two more, that ‘by the mouth of two or three witnesses every word may be established.’ And if he refuses to hear them, tell it to the church. But if he refuses even to hear the church, let him be to you like a heathen and a tax collector. (Matt. 18:15-17)
Remember, building a kingdom of power involves exploiting weakness and using it as a weapon. But when a Christian sins against you, those options are not open to you. In the case of a private sin between him and you, go and show him his sin privately; do it again if you have to. If he doesn’t repent, take a witness or two along, only to urge him to confess his sin; do this several times if need be. If the matter continues, it may be necessary to tell it to the church, so that believers might pray for him and call him to repent. What is the purpose of all of this-to shame the offender and exploit his sin? Not at all-the goal is to bring him to repentance, so that he will be forgiven. Only as a last resort is a stubbornly unrepentant sinner asked to leave the church. It is far easier to confront an offender in a red-faced rage, or alternatively, to act like a victim, and gossip about how someone hurt you, maybe to get some kind of power over them. You figure, if they feel worse, then I have to feel better. That’s the deceptive guarantee that power offers.
But in the kingdom of grace, the Lord Jesus gathers the lowly, weak ones who confess their sin. He forgives them, and then calls for them to forgive and serve each other. It’s a Church built on forgiveness, not force; it’s a kingdom of grace, not power. And it will never work. At least, that’s what the world claims. In fact, it’s a mystery to the world that the Church has survived this long, and no surprise that the world expects the demise of the Church to come soon. This is for two reasons: The world is blinded by sin and thus cannot comprehend forgiveness, and the world is so accustomed to kingdoms of power that a kingdom of grace sounds like sheer nonsense.
Of course, the fellow-Christian who has sinned is also guilty of going for power instead of grace. When one Christian or a whole Church calls upon him to repent so that he might be forgiven, he may obstinately refuse. Instead of confession, he may seek to hurt those who confront him. He might go on the offensive and bring up past-forgiven-sins of others, or he might twist facts and slander those who seek his repentance. This too is not the way of grace. This is trying to use power to get one’s way, to create one’s own little kingdom of authority. If the sinner so persists, the Church is eventually to dismiss him from among the faithful. This is not an act of vengeance: It is a recognition that the sinner has chosen his sin and his private kingdom over against forgiveness and the kingdom of grace. He has made himself an ex-member of the communion of saints; that is why the sad recognition of this fact is called ex-communication.
In the Church, it is far too common to see people in a quest for personal power instead of humble service to God and neighbor. We must agree with the world: It’s a wonder that the Church has survived this long. In fact, it’s nothing short of a miracle. Remember, kingdoms remain only because battles are fought and blood is shed. And yet, the Church in fact has been guaranteed its survival precisely because blood has been shed! The Battle has already been fought and won! But this was not a battle of earthly power, but of the suffering and death of Jesus Christ our Lord. It didn’t look like much of a battle-it looked like one side had all the power. A group of soldiers beat a defenseless man and forced Him through an angry mob to a hilltop outside Jerusalem. They crucified Him and watched Him die. Some battle that was. But this was no ordinary man: This was the Son of God become flesh, and His battle was not against the soldiers and the hecklers. He was fighting against sin, death and the devil. By His death, He destroyed sin’s power, because He has died for all the sins of the world. By His resurrection, He has destroyed the power of death, ripping open the tomb; death can no longer hold His people in the grave. By defeating sin and death, He robbed the devil of his weapons of terror; and thus Christ became victorious forever.
So this kingdom of grace was also built by battle and bloodshed. The Savior shed His blood, and that’s how He has defeated His enemies and built His kingdom. His kingdom stands forever, even though there will still be attacks upon Christians before their entry into paradise. And the Lord Jesus Christ visits His people, gathers them in to His Church and continues to strengthen His kingdom. He promises, “Where two or three are gathered together in My name, I am there in the midst of them” (Matt. 18:20). Christians are gathered in the name of Jesus when they gather according to His Word, are baptized in His Name. They are gathered to His holy Supper, where the Lord Jesus gives them His body and blood “for the forgiveness of sins.” Do you see? Your King of grace is not far away: He is present with you, in His Word and in His Sacraments. And by these means of grace, He forgives you your sin. He shares His victory with you and makes you part of His kingdom. He gives you eternal life.
He is there when only a few, even two or three, are gathered. That doesn’t look like much of a power cell to the world; but the number of believers isn’t what matters. What matters is that the Lord is present, forgiving sins and giving salvation. You find yourself in two kingdoms-a kingdom of power and a kingdom of grace. As citizens of this nation, we pray for our rulers and serve our nation, that peace may be established for the good of all. As citizens of Christ’s kingdom of grace, we give thanks for His enduring victory, His forgiveness, and the freedom He gives us to serve and forgive one another. When we fail, we confess those sins and trust in His grace once again. Long ago, the Lord declared, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit” (Zech. 4:6). You are not His people by your strength or power, but by the work of His Holy Spirit. By His doing, you are gathered here. By the faith He gives, you believe and rejoice in Christ’s death on the cross, as well as His presence with you now. By this work of the Spirit who brings you into the kingdom of grace, you are forgiven of all of your sins.
In the Name of the Father and of the ✝ Son and of the Holy Spirit.